“The Air Force loathed everything about the AX, which soon would be known as the A10. Jokes were made that it was so slow that it suffered bird strikes, from the rear. And that instead of carrying a clock the cockpit had a calendar. The aircraft was so ugly it was called the ‘Warthog’. Many in the Air Force said no airplane could perform or survive in combat as this airplane was supposed to perform. It would be almost twenty years before the A10 had the chance to demonstrate just how wrong its detractors were.”

Robert Coram
Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War

“Hawaiʻians have often struggled to maintain the spirit of aloha, ‘the face of breath’, from the ancient greeting of inclining close in greeting and sharing the air. That is the most famous part of their culture and mainlanders have come to expect that of them. But Hawaiʻians have another important concept, Ho’oponopono, ‘reconciling’, the making right of a bad situation. In the ancient days there were ceremonies to achieve it, to cleanse the minds of anger or selfishness and to come together earnestly and in good faith, to rectify and satisfy. Hawaiʻi deserves to have it made right.”

James L. Haley
Captive Paradise: A History of Hawaii

“It was one of the most memorable meetings during my tenure as Secretary [of Defense]. It was also the only encounter with a foreign leader in which I lost my cool . . . He [King Abdullah] went on and on about how the United States was seen as weak by governments in the region. The longer he talked, the angrier I got . . . I told him that what he considered ‘America's great weakness’, showing restraint, was actually great strength. Because we could crush any adversary. I told him that neither he nor anyone else should ever underestimate the strength and power of the United States. Those who had — Imperial Germany, Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and the Soviet Union — were all now in the ashcan of history.”

U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia
Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War